of the aristocracy by force from the place of assembly in front of the Capitoline temple.  So the second day of election came on; the votes fell as on the preceding day, and again the veto was exercised; the tumult began.  The burgesses dispersed; the elective assembly was practically dissolved; the Capitoline temple was closed; it was rumoured in the city, now that Tiberius had deposed all the tribunes, now that he had resolved to continue his magistracy without reelection.

Death of Gracchus

The senate assembled in the temple of Fidelity, close by the temple of Jupiter; the bitterest opponents of Gracchus spoke in the sitting; when Tiberius moved his hand towards his forehead to signify to the people, amidst the wild tumult, that his head was in danger, it was said that he was already summoning the people to adorn his brow with the regal chaplet.  The consul Scaevola was urged to have the traitor put to death at once.  When that temperate man, by no means averse to reform in itself, indignantly refused the equally irrational and barbarous request, the consular Publius Scipio Nasica, a harsh and vehement aristocrat, summoned those who shared his views to arm themselves as they could and to follow him.  Almost none of the country people had come into town for the elections; the people of the city timidly gave way, when they saw men of quality rushing along with fury in their eyes, and legs of chairs and clubs in their hands.  Gracchus attempted with a few attendants to escape.  But in his flight he fell on the slope of the Capitol, and was killed by a blow on the temples from the bludgeon of one of his furious pursuers —­Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus afterwards contested the infamous honour—­before the statues of the seven kings at the temple of Fidelity; with him three hundred others were slain, not one by weapons of iron.  When evening had come on, the bodies were thrown into the Tiber; Gaius vainly entreated that the corpse of his brother might be granted to him for burial.  Such a day had never before been seen by Rome.  The party-strife lasting for more than a century during the first social crisis had led to no such catastrophe as that with which the second began.  The better portion of the aristocracy might shudder, but they could no longer recede.  They had no choice save to abandon a great number of their most trusty partisans to the vengeance of the multitude, or to assume collectively the responsibility of the outrage:  the latter course was adopted.  They gave official sanction to the assertion that Gracchus had wished to seize the crown, and justified this latest crime by the primitive precedent of Ahala;(33) in fact, they even committed the duty of further investigation as to the accomplices of Gracchus to a special commission and made its head, the consul Publius Popillius, take care that a sort of legal stamp should be supplementarily impressed on the murder of Gracchus by bloody sentences directed against a large number of inferior persons